Sinful Sunday: Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and the Perils of Queer Existence in "Mary Queen of Scots" (2018)
This underrated film uses its queer villain to draw out many of the complexities and tragedies of queer historical existence.
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Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.
The story of Mary, Queen of Scots is one with which most people are passingly familiar. Known for her headstrong demeanor, she was one of the most extraordinary women of the 16th century, a period known for its many reigning queens. Most people also know that she was ultimately brought down by her poor choice in men, particularly her second and third husbands, Henry Darnley and James Bothwell, the former of whom was a drunkard and a weakling and the latter of whom was a lout who most likely raped her and forced her to marry him. Many of the most important events of her life are chronicled in the (highly underrated) 2018 film Mary Queen of Scots.
Though not particularly beloved by critics, this film is quite entertaining, even if it does take some rather egregious liberties with historical fact. In fact, it’s often surprising just how adept it is at exploring the fraught and tempestuous relationship between Mary (played with remarkable depth by Saoirse Ronan) and her first cousin once removed, Elizabeth I (played by Margot Robbie). As two women reigning as queens regnant on the same island, theirs was always going to be a difficult relationship, and as the film shows it wasn’t helped by the fact that they were both headstrong women and that Mary refused to relinquish her claim to her cousin’s throne. Her clutching at it would eventually result in her execution.
While Mary’s fraught relationship with her sister monarch is the film’s emotional heart, Mary also has important bonds with others, including her husband, Darnley (Jack Lowden), whom she marries out of passion, once again allowing her heart to rule her head rather than the other way around. It’s a relationship that carries within it the seeds of Mary’s own demise, for he isn’t nearly as strong or as his wife and, to make matters worse, he’s also far more interested in men than he is in women. It’s precisely this volatile mix of thwarted queer desire, political intrigue, and innate personal weakness that will make Darnley down a very dark road.
When we first meet Darnley he is little more than a hanger-on at the court of Queen Elizabeth, where he lurks with his father. It’s clear that neither of them have achieved much of note in the English queen’s court, despite the fact that the younger Lennox, at least, is her cousin (they shared an ancestor in Henry VII, who was Elizabeth’s grandfather and Darnley’s great-grandfather). Indeed, it’s the younger Lennox’s claim to the throne that makes him so appealing to the young Scottish queen. Well, that and the fact that he is quite dashing and handsome, if a bit squishy. From the moment they meet there are sparks, but it’s just as clear that, for Darnley at least, their marriage is one that will elevate his status and allow him to reclaim some measure of his fraught masculinity.
Even though Darnley proposes to Mary against the beautiful backdrop of the Scottish countryside, there’s something more than a little ominous about the fact that he wants to assert his dominance and mastery of her. Indeed, as their marriage will prove, Mary is not the kind of woman to just bow down and accept the rule of a man, even if that man happens to be her husband and even if doing so is technically her duty as a woman. For Darnley, desperate to prove himself a man–despite his predilections for members of his own sex–this is simply something that cannot be borne. For the rest of their time as a couple it’s this that will continue to come between them, as his resentment continues to grow.
Almost as soon as the marriage begins it starts to fall apart, in no small part because Darnley decides that he would rather spend time in David Rizzio’s (Ismael Cruz Córdova) bed than Mary’s. Mary, for all that she has (rather anachronistically) accepted Rizzio for who he is, still balks at the idea that her husband would cheat on her with another man for the entire court to see. The fact that he is her secretary, and thus beneath both Mary and Darnley, just makes the affair all that much more humiliating. At the same time, there’s no doubting the chemistry that crackles between Rizzio and Darnley.
Of course, Darnley is not the type of person to ever be loyal to anyone except himself and, as the various Scottish lords decide to destroy the Catholic Rizzio–who they believe is a malign influence–it becomes clear that they are going to force Darnley to go along with their plot. In one of the film’s most visually striking and haunting moments, a drunk Darnley is surrounded by the other lords, including his abusive and brutal father, who go so far as to threaten him with exposure if he doesn’t sign his name to their covenant. It’s clear that this costs him a great deal, presumably because he really does have feelings for the Italian, but he nevertheless signs it. In doing so, he sets in motion his own doom.
In a scene drawn from the blood-soaked pages of history, Darnley and the other lords storm into Mary’s apartments, wrest Rizzio from her arms, and brutally stab him to death. Darnley, drunk as always, is forced to deliver the killing blow, with his father literally forcing his hands. It’s this moment, more than any other, that seems to break the dissolute lord. Not only does it shatter his heart to kill the man he loved; he also can’t help but realize that there but for the grace of God, and the lords who still need him, goeth he.
Mary, fortunately, is much savvier than her husband, and she rightly sees that she can draw him back to her own side if she plays her cards right. Though they make a temporary alliance to escape from the lords, she ultimately banishes him to the tiny little house of Kirk o’Field outside of Edinburgh, where he takes up with yet another man, at least until a blast nearly brings the house down around them. Though Darnley manages to escape the explosion, he is strangled to death by faceless assailants (later revealed to be agents of James Bothwell). It’s a sad end for a man who has been a villain, but a rather tragic one.
While the question of whether Darnley slept with men or not is something of an open question, what’s not in dispute is that, as the film demonstrates, he really was a weak and debauched man, someone who clung so desperately to his desire for the Crown Matrimonial–which would essentially make him equal with Mary–that he was willing to sign on with those who didn’t have his best interests at heart. Again and again the film highlights his fundamentally weak character. His tragic arc is that he wants power so desperately but is one of those who simply cannot and should not be trusted with it.
Yet there’s complexity to him too, at least from the film’s perspective. One gets the sense that Darnley is who he is because of the restrictive gender norms of his time and because of a domineering and cruel tyrant of a father who refuses to see his son as who he is and instead tries to break him. Given this, is it any surprise that Darnley has turned inward, becoming a sad and cruel and ineffectual little tyrant? The fact that he is so utterly ineffectual when trying to get Mary to bend to his will makes him even more pitiable. He’s a queer man born into a patriarchal culture where he is expected to lead and this ends up being the one thing that he really can’t or won’t be allowed to do.
Darnley emerges from Mary Queen of Scots as a young man far out of his depth who is ultimately doomed by both his own weaknesses and by the turbulent and deeply misogynist world in which he was born and raised. Though he does at least manage to produce an heir with Mary, he doesn’t get to enjoy him very long before their estrangement ends up denying him any access to his child. Like Mary, he won’t be able to see his son grow up to unite their claims to the English throne, though perhaps he could take some comfort from knowing that James would go on to have more than a few affairs of his own with the rougher sex.
Thus, for all that this film may take many liberties with the established record–including the fiction that Elizabeth and Mary met face-to-face–I do think it gets to something authentic about the tortured existence that so many queer people experienced at the time. For men like Darnley, their birth gave them privilege, but nothing could really give them the love and acceptance that, on some level, they probably craved. As such, Darnley, and Rizzio, are reminders of how much has changed and how much so many of us take for granted.